Steak sandwiches, such as Philadelphia style or "Philly" steak sandwiches, have become highly popular. Commercially, the beef steaks used in these sandwiches are generally supplied precooked.
The standard commercial process for providing precooked beef steak slices entails packing fresh beef chunks into boxes or metal pans to form molds of solid meat blocks. The meat chunk molds are frozen to a temperature of about minus 10.degree. F. When needed, the molds are tempered, that is, allowed to warm to a temperature of about 28.degree. F. for slicing. The meat must be frozen to firm the meat sufficiently throughout so that it can be handled by conventional, automatic meat slicers and keep frozen so the chunks remain together at least until sliced. The automatic meat slicers deposit a series of cut meat slices onto a conveyer which carries the separated slices into an oven or other "dry" cooker. The individual slices are cooked throughout. The cooked slices are then packaged for shipment.
The conventional process of preparing fully cooked beef slices suffers from high fixed and variable costs. An inventory of metal boxes/pans and cold storage facilities must be provided. The meat must be deeply frozen to firm the meat sufficiently throughout so that it can be handled by conventional, automatic meat-slicing equipment. Freezing takes one to two days. Tempering frozen meat takes another two to three days. Thus, significant amounts of meat must be maintained in inventory or delays will be incurred if the process is not begun until after orders are received. Even with quick or flash freezing, the above-described conventional process typically results in a shrunken and grey colored finished product because of damaging the cell structure and having a taste different from cooking fresh meat.
The foregoing conventional process is also very labor intensive. Meat must be manually placed into and removed from the boxes or pans which must also be cleaned and stored between uses. The meat is manually moved through various locations in a facility including into and out of freezers during the various processing stages.
Lastly, the conventional process is energy intensive. The energy costs of freezing and tempering the meat far exceed that of slicing and cooking it.
There is a need for a method which improves the quality of the final cooked, sliced meat product and which reduces the cost, time and equipment needed to provide such a cooked, sliced meat product.